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From now on the features will be once a week in the middle of the week rather every Sunday and every other Wednesday. :-)
Today’s features are inspired by the dreams and nightmares that make the contradiction we live. I’ve got a cold so rather than a long explanation I jump right in… :-)
Sometimes we twirl and we swirl and we get dizzy with the possibilities…
of all her mighty dreams by © Mushda
Standing still is not an option…
Surface introspection by © su2anne
This mirror
That shows how we appear
Is but a suface reflection.
Do not be transfixed
By this glammer.
Rather
Take a breath
And dive deep
Into the underworld
That is emotion and dreams.
Trust and know
In your true self
Not just this suface
That is your reflection.
Dreams are powerful…
Dreams by © Manana11
And sometimes what we dream of is just a delusion that tempts us with its pretty colours.
Mirage by © moonlover
Are we chasing a mirage?
Something that’s not real.
We keep running, searching,
looking for one ultimate high,
Obsession to reach something.
More of this, more of that,
If I can have that,
I will be happy.
In the meantime, what is essential
Gets neglected by the wayside.
Before long,
the ‘true’ and ‘genuine’
Will pass you by, like time that waits for no one.
“Vanity of vanities,”
The great wise man said,
“All is vanity and running after the wind.”
~ 25/9/2011 (written whilst packing to do some work tomorrow in the
Gold Coast, Australia)
And sometimes, late at night, dreams (and nightmares) carry us off someplace else.
Midnight Geisha by © Barbora “Mad Alice” Urbankova
And sometimes it’s the words that remain and carry us forward on their wings.
Birds by © Vesna VD
If you wished for the words
I always have words for you
They come to me like birds
Out of nowhere, out of the blue
I just stop doing everything
At least that’s what I think
And they show up
Splash, spread the wings, start to sing
It so easy to offer them welcome
They just need some water and seeds
I’d give them the whole sky and then some
Giving is one of our needs
BUT sometimes the nightmares seep through into the daylight.
Blood tears by © KERES Jasminka
Circumstances change the way seasons do…
.::From One Season To The Next::. by © Agent7
When spring was born…
so was I
and we reigned together over awakening
until Summer arrived
to court me,
like the devil bearing a rose
Just ’woke one day, to find her there -
dressed in lavender dew
& sunset-divine;
flirting with the fall
daring him to duel
(for life)
but …
when he called her bluff
with a hurricane thrust,
she left my side to cower
(’neath his painted blanket )
kissing seedlings goodnight as she went
&
as I bargained with the frost
to please,
spare me his biting cold…
old man Winter silenced my scream
with the dance
of a
single
snowflake *
And what we coped with one day, is too much the next, the acceptance we held today is gone tomorrow leading us unto a road of self destruction…
Self-Destruct by © MotleyChloe
Letting go is sooooooooo hard and sometimes impossible without dreams to sustain us.
Lullaby by © Jenifer DeBellis
All is vanity and a chasing after wind. ~ Ecclesiastes 1:14
With one last tug Rae tightened the yellow satin ribbon into a perfect bow. “This is how we’ll remember each other,” she said, pecking me hard on the cheek. She stepped back to admire her handiwork, tilted her head in satisfaction, and then turned and ran from the shaded spot under the willow tree where we’d spent the last few hours together.
I didn’t bother running after her. What would that solve anyway? I knew she’d still visit me every night in my dreams. And I knew I’d get to see her sunshiny smile every time I stroked the soft edges of that yellow ribbon. That would have to be enough.
A cluster of twisted roots dug into my tailbone, but I couldn’t bring myself to move, not just yet, anyway. Rae’s silhouette got smaller and smaller until she disappeared altogether. It was the first time she didn’t look back one last time to give me that reassuring smile I’d grown to rely on – the one that kept me from jumping to my death when we sat on the third level of Billy’s barn loft. It was the one that reassured me that the battle wounds from Dad’s last drunken outburst were a part of a passing season, nothing more than a blip on the radar screen. That smile was my salvation.
“I’m worried about Ronny,” I heard Mom say to Aunt Pauline. “He’s not adjusting.” It was hard to believe they didn’t know we could hear everything they talked about through that open screen. But I’m sure they weren’t aware 0f how their voices floated on the breeze as they sat at that table spilling out their souls and the secrets of half the town.
“I know. Mrs. Daphne says she sees him sitting under that tree every morning when she leaves for work and in exactly the same spot when she returns. “It’s not healthy, Pat, it’s just not.” She coughed to clear her throat. “He needs to let her go.”
Even from where I sat I could hear the wheeze of thirty years of chain smoking sing out through my aunt’s heavy sigh. Even from where I sat I couldn’t escape the sound of their heavy sighs.
The leaves overhead rustled – the sound of rice pouring from a box – and I was grateful for the distraction this offered. I shifted my weight into the contour of the tangled roots, roots that twisted in wrath-filled bulges as they pushed back up through toughened ground in search of something… perhaps sunlight or fresh air. Each mangled vein was a reminder of the struggles attached to growth. Settling back against the trunk I began to admire the way the sun played off the silver, otherwise lifeless leaves. Any day now they would begin to make their descent back to the ground where they would then burrow their way back into this hardened earth and infuse new life into the willow just in time for spring. Even though the song of the robins and sparrows still filled the air, the smell of early autumn mold was undeniable, the smell of rotting earth was unavoidable.
Hundreds of little shards of light danced upon my chest and bare legs. I was a diamond locked up in a forgotten cellar, just like Rae was always telling me. I was full of luster, the kind that exists when something is brand new. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Ronny,” she would remind me with her face half turned at me in order to give her raised eyebrow more emphasis. I rolled Rae’s words over and over in my head, allowing silver sparkles of light to dance around them. I have my whole life ahead of me. What was that even worth anymore? This seemed more like a death sentence than a promise of life.
Closing my eyes I reached my arms above my head and wrapped them as far as they would reach around the tree’s trunk. The edges of the yellow ribbon had already begun to fray and tickled my fingertips. I traced along the familiar trunk and recommitted each rough groove and each worn smooth spot to my memory, lingering a while before I allowed my fingers to trace over the engraved R + R, which ended up looking like an R x R and thus gave us more mileage out of our connectedness.
When we were kids we spent hours down by the abandoned railroad station reenacting anything from last decade’s circus act that passed through our sleepy town to the turn of the century’s hustle and bustle boom town depot.
Sometimes we snuck out in the middle of the night and met each other in one of the three abandoned boxcars that stood out from the landscape as tattooed rebels. As we got older we’d kiss and talk about our future while we held each other until the dawn of another day threatened to expose us. I knew every scar, every mole, and each beautiful curve of Rae’s entire being, sometimes pointing out new discoveries she hadn’t even noticed yet. There wasn’t a piece of her I didn’t learn to appreciate.
Those boxcars were a sight! A few times someone tried painting over them in an attempt to cover up the profanity that memorialised a generation whose angst was stirred into a whirlwind of graphic colour. But after a few days of rain and determined sun, each image – and the message attached to it – bled right back through. Oddly, the white and brown and black paint left behind layered marks that resembled a trail of blood leaving the wound. They ran and blended together as if to solidify one body of racial indifference that with a united voice cried out for justice.
Rae’s humming as she approached made me smile. Her voice, sweet with a woody afterthought, was often the only sound that could lull me to sleep on restless nights. I kept my eyes closed and found the rhythm of her steps as they crunched over parched earth, her steps occasionally muffled and interrupted by the soft patches of grass that managed to grow in wild clumps and littered random spots of our yard. There was an interesting clink like that of a wind chime which mixed with these other sounds and added a nice mix to the tempo. Yes, I breathed in her lavender scent as it mixed with the autumn air, I knew she’d come right back.
“Here.” She stretched her hand down and pressed a sweating, cold glass against my hand. “If I didn’t come to check up on you, you’d die of neglect.” The smile in those words still lingered in her curled lips when I opened my eyes.
“I always miss you when you’re away.” I reached out my empty hand to her.
She accepted it and knelt next to me, and kissed my half parted lips with urgency – floral pine with a hint of nutmeg. I breathed her in deeper, every intoxicating element. And just as she’d done earlier, she stood up and ran away from me.
“Wait Rae!” I pushed myself up from my resting place. The glass fell from my hand, landing with a thud followed by the clank of glass breaking into pieces. “Wait, I said. I’m not ready for you to leave.” I ran after her this time with more determination than in times past. It was no use though; she was always a stronger runner than I was. As I hesitated, dodging large pebbles and potholes, she glided over the road like a gazelle and vanished behind the first hill before I could make it to the top in time to catch her last smile as she looked back.
I felt defeated, again. How could I let her slip away, again? Yet something buried within the darkest recesses of my awareness calmed my racing pulse. She’d be back. I inhaled two short breaths and exhaled a heavy sigh, just like Rae had showed me was a runner’s quickest way of regulating an over-stimulated pulse. And again, breathe. I welcomed in the familiar tranquility. She can’t live without me.
Leaving you with the ultimate nightmare…
The Killer – Murder in the making by © Tam Locke
…and a pithy fitting last comment.
Perspective by © singerchick
The rear-view mirror is a most powerful microscope.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s features, albeit with very brief comments. My brain is all mush from the cold, so each thought has to be teased out… Tell the artists and writers and leave a comment on their pages. :-) xo
Today’s features are inspired by the dreams and nightmares that make the contradiction we live. I’ve got a cold so rather than a long explanation I jump right in… :-)
Sometimes we twirl and we swirl and we get dizzy with the possibilities…
of all her mighty dreams by © Mushda
Standing still is not an option…
Surface introspection by © su2anne
This mirror
That shows how we appear
Is but a suface reflection.
Do not be transfixed
By this glammer.
Rather
Take a breath
And dive deep
Into the underworld
That is emotion and dreams.
Trust and know
In your true self
Not just this suface
That is your reflection.
Dreams are powerful…
Dreams by © Manana11
And sometimes what we dream of is just a delusion that tempts us with its pretty colours.
Mirage by © moonlover
Are we chasing a mirage?
Something that’s not real.
We keep running, searching,
looking for one ultimate high,
Obsession to reach something.
More of this, more of that,
If I can have that,
I will be happy.
In the meantime, what is essential
Gets neglected by the wayside.
Before long,
the ‘true’ and ‘genuine’
Will pass you by, like time that waits for no one.
“Vanity of vanities,”
The great wise man said,
“All is vanity and running after the wind.”
~ 25/9/2011 (written whilst packing to do some work tomorrow in the
Gold Coast, Australia)
And sometimes, late at night, dreams (and nightmares) carry us off someplace else.
Midnight Geisha by © Barbora “Mad Alice” Urbankova
And sometimes it’s the words that remain and carry us forward on their wings.
Birds by © Vesna VD
If you wished for the words
I always have words for you
They come to me like birds
Out of nowhere, out of the blue
I just stop doing everything
At least that’s what I think
And they show up
Splash, spread the wings, start to sing
It so easy to offer them welcome
They just need some water and seeds
I’d give them the whole sky and then some
Giving is one of our needs
BUT sometimes the nightmares seep through into the daylight.
Blood tears by © KERES Jasminka
Circumstances change the way seasons do…
.::From One Season To The Next::. by © Agent7
When spring was born…
so was I
and we reigned together over awakening
until Summer arrived
to court me,
like the devil bearing a rose
Just ’woke one day, to find her there -
dressed in lavender dew
& sunset-divine;
flirting with the fall
daring him to duel
(for life)
but …
when he called her bluff
with a hurricane thrust,
she left my side to cower
(’neath his painted blanket )
kissing seedlings goodnight as she went
&
as I bargained with the frost
to please,
spare me his biting cold…
old man Winter silenced my scream
with the dance
of a
single
snowflake *
And what we coped with one day, is too much the next, the acceptance we held today is gone tomorrow leading us unto a road of self destruction…
Self-Destruct by © MotleyChloe
Letting go is sooooooooo hard and sometimes impossible without dreams to sustain us.
Lullaby by © Jenifer DeBellis
All is vanity and a chasing after wind. ~ Ecclesiastes 1:14
With one last tug Rae tightened the yellow satin ribbon into a perfect bow. “This is how we’ll remember each other,” she said, pecking me hard on the cheek. She stepped back to admire her handiwork, tilted her head in satisfaction, and then turned and ran from the shaded spot under the willow tree where we’d spent the last few hours together.
I didn’t bother running after her. What would that solve anyway? I knew she’d still visit me every night in my dreams. And I knew I’d get to see her sunshiny smile every time I stroked the soft edges of that yellow ribbon. That would have to be enough.
A cluster of twisted roots dug into my tailbone, but I couldn’t bring myself to move, not just yet, anyway. Rae’s silhouette got smaller and smaller until she disappeared altogether. It was the first time she didn’t look back one last time to give me that reassuring smile I’d grown to rely on – the one that kept me from jumping to my death when we sat on the third level of Billy’s barn loft. It was the one that reassured me that the battle wounds from Dad’s last drunken outburst were a part of a passing season, nothing more than a blip on the radar screen. That smile was my salvation.
“I’m worried about Ronny,” I heard Mom say to Aunt Pauline. “He’s not adjusting.” It was hard to believe they didn’t know we could hear everything they talked about through that open screen. But I’m sure they weren’t aware 0f how their voices floated on the breeze as they sat at that table spilling out their souls and the secrets of half the town.
“I know. Mrs. Daphne says she sees him sitting under that tree every morning when she leaves for work and in exactly the same spot when she returns. “It’s not healthy, Pat, it’s just not.” She coughed to clear her throat. “He needs to let her go.”
Even from where I sat I could hear the wheeze of thirty years of chain smoking sing out through my aunt’s heavy sigh. Even from where I sat I couldn’t escape the sound of their heavy sighs.
The leaves overhead rustled – the sound of rice pouring from a box – and I was grateful for the distraction this offered. I shifted my weight into the contour of the tangled roots, roots that twisted in wrath-filled bulges as they pushed back up through toughened ground in search of something… perhaps sunlight or fresh air. Each mangled vein was a reminder of the struggles attached to growth. Settling back against the trunk I began to admire the way the sun played off the silver, otherwise lifeless leaves. Any day now they would begin to make their descent back to the ground where they would then burrow their way back into this hardened earth and infuse new life into the willow just in time for spring. Even though the song of the robins and sparrows still filled the air, the smell of early autumn mold was undeniable, the smell of rotting earth was unavoidable.
Hundreds of little shards of light danced upon my chest and bare legs. I was a diamond locked up in a forgotten cellar, just like Rae was always telling me. I was full of luster, the kind that exists when something is brand new. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Ronny,” she would remind me with her face half turned at me in order to give her raised eyebrow more emphasis. I rolled Rae’s words over and over in my head, allowing silver sparkles of light to dance around them. I have my whole life ahead of me. What was that even worth anymore? This seemed more like a death sentence than a promise of life.
Closing my eyes I reached my arms above my head and wrapped them as far as they would reach around the tree’s trunk. The edges of the yellow ribbon had already begun to fray and tickled my fingertips. I traced along the familiar trunk and recommitted each rough groove and each worn smooth spot to my memory, lingering a while before I allowed my fingers to trace over the engraved R + R, which ended up looking like an R x R and thus gave us more mileage out of our connectedness.
When we were kids we spent hours down by the abandoned railroad station reenacting anything from last decade’s circus act that passed through our sleepy town to the turn of the century’s hustle and bustle boom town depot.
Sometimes we snuck out in the middle of the night and met each other in one of the three abandoned boxcars that stood out from the landscape as tattooed rebels. As we got older we’d kiss and talk about our future while we held each other until the dawn of another day threatened to expose us. I knew every scar, every mole, and each beautiful curve of Rae’s entire being, sometimes pointing out new discoveries she hadn’t even noticed yet. There wasn’t a piece of her I didn’t learn to appreciate.
Those boxcars were a sight! A few times someone tried painting over them in an attempt to cover up the profanity that memorialised a generation whose angst was stirred into a whirlwind of graphic colour. But after a few days of rain and determined sun, each image – and the message attached to it – bled right back through. Oddly, the white and brown and black paint left behind layered marks that resembled a trail of blood leaving the wound. They ran and blended together as if to solidify one body of racial indifference that with a united voice cried out for justice.
Rae’s humming as she approached made me smile. Her voice, sweet with a woody afterthought, was often the only sound that could lull me to sleep on restless nights. I kept my eyes closed and found the rhythm of her steps as they crunched over parched earth, her steps occasionally muffled and interrupted by the soft patches of grass that managed to grow in wild clumps and littered random spots of our yard. There was an interesting clink like that of a wind chime which mixed with these other sounds and added a nice mix to the tempo. Yes, I breathed in her lavender scent as it mixed with the autumn air, I knew she’d come right back.
“Here.” She stretched her hand down and pressed a sweating, cold glass against my hand. “If I didn’t come to check up on you, you’d die of neglect.” The smile in those words still lingered in her curled lips when I opened my eyes.
“I always miss you when you’re away.” I reached out my empty hand to her.
She accepted it and knelt next to me, and kissed my half parted lips with urgency – floral pine with a hint of nutmeg. I breathed her in deeper, every intoxicating element. And just as she’d done earlier, she stood up and ran away from me.
“Wait Rae!” I pushed myself up from my resting place. The glass fell from my hand, landing with a thud followed by the clank of glass breaking into pieces. “Wait, I said. I’m not ready for you to leave.” I ran after her this time with more determination than in times past. It was no use though; she was always a stronger runner than I was. As I hesitated, dodging large pebbles and potholes, she glided over the road like a gazelle and vanished behind the first hill before I could make it to the top in time to catch her last smile as she looked back.
I felt defeated, again. How could I let her slip away, again? Yet something buried within the darkest recesses of my awareness calmed my racing pulse. She’d be back. I inhaled two short breaths and exhaled a heavy sigh, just like Rae had showed me was a runner’s quickest way of regulating an over-stimulated pulse. And again, breathe. I welcomed in the familiar tranquility. She can’t live without me.
Leaving you with the ultimate nightmare…
The Killer – Murder in the making by © Tam Locke
…and a pithy fitting last comment.
Perspective by © singerchick
The rear-view mirror is a most powerful microscope.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s features, albeit with very brief comments. My brain is all mush from the cold, so each thought has to be teased out… Tell the artists and writers and leave a comment on their pages. :-) xo
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